Linda,

 

I like your distinction between the gerund and the infinitive as event-related and existing on the realis scale.  That certainly bears out in the distribution of gerunds and infinitives as verb complements, gerunds generally being factive and having truth value, infinitives non-factive and not having truth value.  So we tend to use gerunds after emotive and sensory verbs as in

 

The children enjoyed playing/*to play Chutes and Ladders.  (They actually played it.)

The children wanted *playing/to play Chutes and Ladders.  (We don’t know if they played it.)

The police directed the crowd to disperse.  (We don’t know if they did disperse.)

The police directed the dispersing of the crowd.  (They did disperse—or were dispersed.)

 

However, reference is a little messier, and perhaps indexing was the wrong term.  “It,” “this.” and “that” can all refer not simply to nominal anaphors but to events, to concepts, to discourse propositions, or to pragmatic properties like the order of elements in a sentence.  This has been a problem for syntacticians for a long time and is part of what stimulated the short-lived Generative Semantics movement of the early 70s.  Ultimately, the semantics of reference can be handled only within the framework of discourse pragmatics, not just syntax, although there are clear syntactic conditions governing some referential phenomena.

 

As to “best reading,” I don’t know what that is.  Best reading also depends heavily on discourse context, a Craig pointed out in his response critiquing the drill question itself.  If there is more than one reading, depending on context, then a sentence in isolation arguably cannot have a best reading.  That depends on the context you construct for it.  But I’ll hedge on this statement when I look at your sentence “Miriam likes listening to singing, but she is not good at it."  Singing is one of those skills we evaluate readily.  We all know that listening is also and that listening can be trained, but most people don’t regard listening as a skill, rather as simple sense perception.  So I suspect most speakers would apply the evaluative clause to “singing” rather than to “listening.”

 

Herb

 

 

 

Hi, Herb. I always enjoy your in-depth explanations--but do allow me to play devil's advocate for just a bit in a very simple way now. And maybe you can straighten me out here when you've got time (if you've got time). Two points/questions:

 

1. You said: " I’m not sure that this is a processing issue.  You’re talking here about reference and about how pronouns are indexed. It is certainly the case that we can’t use a to-infinitive as object of a preposition, one of the arguments for not calling all infinitives noun phrases.The form that the VP will take in a particular environment tends to be tightly governed grammatically, so the more noun-like gerund will show up after the preposition."

 

Can we not make the argument that the mental/cognitive association of nouns with pronouns (in processing) is exactly tied to the way in which we understand the grammar?  I mean, isn't the basis of indexing semantic, and thus can be seen as cognitive? And that perhaps the more noun-like gerund shows up after the preposition in this case because of the way in which we understand the sentence from a processing perspective?  That is, we can easily interpret A , but we need to re-process B in order to understand it. 

 

And could there be an event-related element here too? I mean, the gerund seems to refer to an action in process, so it is more natural to think about being good at an action in process. The infinitive expresses an event that is somehow more of an abstraction to me: She likes to sing when she does it

 

A: Miriam likes singing, but she is not good at it.

Miriam likes singing, but she is not good at singing.

 

B: Miriam likes to sing, but she is not good at it.

*Miriam likes to sing, but she is not good at to sing.

Miriam likes to sing, but she is not good at singing.

 

 

2. You wrote: " There are other differences between the sentences as well.  In A it isn’t necessary that Miriam do the singing.  She likes listening to it but isn’t good at singing herself.  B doesn’t allow that interpretation.  Miriam has to be interpreted as subject of “to sing.”  In A she’s not necessarily in the church choir I direct.  In B she is, unfortunately.  The “it” can refer to either of these meanings." 

 

The best reading that I get for A is when Miriam does the singing herself (the same interpretation as B).  If I interpret A as "Miriam likes listening to singing, but she is not good at it" I have to reprocess and think:  Is it listening or singing that she is not good at?

 

Linda

 

 

From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of STAHLKE, HERBERT F
Sent: Monday, March 17, 2008 10:44 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: gerund vs infinitive

Linda,

 

I’m not sure that this is a processing issue.  You’re talking here about reference and about how pronouns are indexed.  It is certainly the case that we can’t use a to-infinitive as object of a preposition, one of the arguments for not calling all infinitives noun phrases.  The form that the VP will take in a particular environment tends to be tightly governed grammatically, so the more noun-like gerund will show up after the preposition.  There are other differences between the sentences as well.  In A it isn’t necessary that Miriam do the singing.  She likes listening to it but isn’t good at singing herself.  B doesn’t allow that interpretation.  Miriam has to be interpreted as subject of “to sing.”  In A she’s not necessarily in the church choir I direct.  In B she is, unfortunately.  The “it” can refer to either of these meanings.

 

Herb

 

 

I think that the simple explanation for the preference of A over B lies in the way in which hearers process the sentences. It is much easier to substitute "singing" for "it" in A, but not in B.

 

A: Miriam likes singing, but she is not good at it.

Miriam likes singing, but she is not good at singing.

B: Miriam likes to sing, but she is not good at it.

*Miriam likes to sing, but she is not good at to sing.

 

Linda

 

 

From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of STAHLKE, HERBERT F
Sent: Sunday, March 16, 2008 11:35 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: gerund vs infinitive

Nancy,

 

I like the fact that you treat verbness as a matter of degree, as, I assume, you would also treat nouns.  And you’re right that a gerund is more nouny than an infinitive.  A lot of syntacticians would not even treat the infinitive in “likes to sing” as a noun phrase, simply as a tenseless VP serving as complement to “likes.”  The drill question, however, like so many drill questions, oversimplifies matters.   Reference doesn’t have to be simply to a noun; it can be to a clause or even to a contextual factor.  Consider a sentence like

 

Finish a direct quotation with a period and quotation marks, in that order. 

 

The referent of “that” is clearly the order in which the two marks of punctuation are given, something that is not only not a noun phrase but is arguably not even a grammatical structure.  It is, rather, an ordered pair, and it’s the order that counts.  In the second sentence in the drill, the referent of “that” is activity of singing, not a particular word or grammatical structure.  It might actually be possible to come up with situations where one referent would make better sense than the other.

 

Herb

 

 

OK, why is it that I see my mistakes right after I hit send?

 

Of course, both the infinitive and the gerund follow the verb “likes,” not a preposition. I have already sent a correction to Diane on that point, but the question still remains: is one a better referent than the other, and, if so, why?

 

Thanks,

Nancy

 

 

Dear listers,

 

I received an inquiry from someone today and would like to know how you would have responded to it had it been sent to you. The original post is at the bottom, and my response is above it.

 

Thanks for your feedback—I always learn a great deal from you.  

 

 

Diane,

 

You raise a very interesting question.

 

I suspect that the test writers regard the gerund as a clearer referent because you can replace “it” with the gerund and the sentence makes sense. We can say "She is not good at singing," but we cannot say "she is not good at to sing."

 

Nonetheless, as you point out, both the gerund and the infinitive are functioning as nominals (objects of the preposition “like”). One might, therefore, logically conclude that either would qualify as a clear referent for a pronoun.  Perhaps infinitives, although they can function as nominals, retain more of their “verb-ness” than gerunds, which quite strongly take on the quality of a thing or an act—something one could place a determiner in front of: “her singing,” “the singing,” etc. but not “her to sing,” “the to sing.”

 

Thank you for attending our session at the STD conference.

 

Best,

Nancy

 

Nancy Lewis Tuten, PhD

Professor of English

Director of the Writing Program for the

Pearce Communication Center

Columbia College

1301 Columbia College Drive

Columbia, South Carolina 29203

USA

803-786-3706

 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: diane skinner [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Saturday, March 15, 2008 3:12 PM
To: Tuten, Nancy
Subject: gerund vs infinitive?

 

Dear Professor Tuten,

 

I met you at the Sigma Tau Delta Conference in your Grammar Panel.

 

I have a question for you.

In my writing center, during grammar drills, a computer-generated

question asked,

 "Which is the clearest referent for the pronoun in the following sentences?"

A: Miriam likes singing, but she is not good at it.

B: Miriam likes to sing, but she is not good at it.

 

The answer was A, but no explanation was given.

Could you please clarify this answer since the verbs can be followed

by either an infinitive or a gerund, and there will be virtually no

difference in the meaning of the two sentences.

 

Does the infinitive "to sing" act as an object for the verb "likes,"

or does it act as a verb to the linking verb "likes"?

How can a distinction be made between a gerund being nominative and an

infinitive being nominative?

Is this a special case because of the word "likes"?

 

When you have the time, I would sincerely appreciate a response.

 

Thank you.

Diane Skinner

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